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SpeakUP! Young Women Share Powerful Stories of Identity, Gender, and Violence

STORYCENTER Blog

We are pleased to present posts by StoryCenter staff, storytellers, colleagues from partnering organizations, and thought leaders in Storywork and related fields.

SpeakUP! Young Women Share Powerful Stories of Identity, Gender, and Violence

StoryCenter Admin

Editor’s Note: We continue our social justice blog series by re-publishing this piece about our Silence Speaks partnership with Grassroot Soccer South Africa.

By Jenn Warren and Amy Hill

I want to make sure that my voice is heard – and not just my voice, but thousands of women out there. So for me, I was crying out loud for those women, and I stood up for them so that we can make sure that their voices are heard – my voice is heard. That means that the next generation of young women, their voices will also be heard. (Grassroot Soccer storyteller)

Traditional and cultural norms in South Africa, coupled with the legacy of the systemic, state-sanctioned violence of Apartheid over generations, has fueled a society with one of the world’s highest rates of sexual and gender-based violence against adolescent girls and young women. The nature of patriarchy is long-standing and profoundly embedded in the country, and women’s stories are often forgotten and untold. We need creative interventions to deal with the pervasive inequalities and gender-oppressive systems, including oral histories, trauma healing and the re-presentation of women.

As part of the movement to improve sexuality education, and prevent HIV and violence in South Africa, Grassroot Soccer leverages the power of soccer to educate, inspire and mobilize youth to overcome their greatest health challenges, live healthier, more productive lives, and be agents for change in their communities. The organization works with young adult mentors to incorporate sport in dynamic, interactive lessons that provide a safe space for engaging adolescents, deconstructing harmful gender norms, preventing violence, and encouraging participants to seek sexual and reproductive health services.

In March 2016, StoryCenter’s Silence Speaks initiative partnered with Grassroot Soccer in Cape Town, to lead a five-day storytelling and participatory media workshop with an inspiring group of female mentors. This collaboration between StoryCenter, Grassroot Soccer South Africa, the Ford Foundation, and Malmo University (via Jenn Warren’s research study) took place in Khayelitsha – one of South Africa’s largest and fastest growing townships – and was inspired by Grassroot Soccer’s female mentors who had expressed a need for greater support in confronting harmful gender norms and sexual health issues in their personal lives and at work:

We need to do something… We are hungry for spaces that we can talk about these things. I think it will benefit us. And we can also share the videos with others, and maybe with our participants. (Grassroot Soccer storyteller)

The project was framed as an exploratory study of whether the act of creating and sharing digital stories can foster digital literacy, self-awareness, reflection and mutual support among young women. The study also sought to understand whether the act of creating and sharing digital stories could support young women to challenge harmful gender norms and encourage self-representation. In collaboration with Grassroot Soccer staff, we brought participants together for a group Story Circle; guided them through the process of writing and recording short scripts; and taught them the basics of photography, videography, and visual ethics. We then coordinated an on-location photo and video shoot to support participants in documenting their stories, and guided them through digital tutorials to enable them to edit the stories as short videos.

Study findings confirm that a thoughtfully planned and facilitated digital storytelling workshop can be an effective tool for both individual and community change. Participants reported increases in knowledge about themselves and their technical abilities, improved attitudes in the areas of strength, voice and leadership; and more open, substantive and supportive communication with their peers. Most notable was the seed of intention towards social change - conscientisation - that surfaced among the storytellers, expressed as the realization that when someone desires change in her own life, she must therefore also seek to effect change in her surroundings.

The young women’s stories touch on overcoming gender-bias in sport, surviving gender-based violence, and the resilience it takes to thrive in spite of deeply entrenched structural obstacles to staying healthy. The stories are currently being shared at conferences and other events focused on gender, sport, adolescent health and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and the storytellers themselves are working with Grassroot Soccer to coordinate and lead community-based story screenings as a way of bringing visibility to young women’s voices and creating safe spaces for their peers to respond, thus joining the call for the rights of girls and women across South Africa.

View all of the Grassroot Soccer stories and read Jenn Warren’s digital storytelling research study.

Interested in learning more about StoryCenter's Silence Speaks work overseas? We're offering a webinar on wed., Sept. 13, "Digital Storytelling for Global Health and Rights."